Things are about to change at Ezinearticles

Oh, forgot this little tidbit:

Articles submitted are currently required to be exclusive to you (ie: Our software and human Editors won't find your article submission on the Internet under someone else's or no name) but they do not need to be exclusive to EzineArticles.com.

And this:

We're considering raising the minimum article word count to 400. Currently we give less exposure to articles that are between 250-400 words, but we still accept them. Thin content often comes under 400 words even though I have seen many high quality articles in the 250-400 range, it is rare. 600-850 words may become the new normal with 400 being the minimum.

Wow! And now the resource box is also NO Follow now!!

Personally I think EzineArticles should charge a fee per article to clean up these low quality content producers who muck it up for the rest of us.

I read through what Chris and the EZA team plan to do in order to correct the problems/issues that caused them to lose some credability with Google and I salute them.

All changes will weed out the folks that have gamed EZA and will significantly benefit the authors that have focused on providing quality content.

Regarding the minimum word count - That was already coming and many top article marketers will not even be affected by the increased word count because they were already submitting articles over 400 words.

They are also considering making all submitted content be unique to EZA and published nowehere else. Again, some article marketers have already been advocated using unique content with EZA so no harm here.

They will be decreasing the amount of adsense ads on articles - LOVE IT!!!!

I don't really see any change sthat will hurt a competant article marketer and actually look forward to embracing the changes and moving forward as they are implemented.

It's about time that original quality content played a much larger role in an article marketers kit bag.

Respectfully,
Tim

EZA seems to be tightening the reins. That's the good news. The bad news is it may be opening itself to Facebook, I've heard their toying with the idea getting into the article directory business. Don't laugh, Google and MySpace laughed two years ago.

Unfortunately, EZA is getting the Google-itis ... take it or leave it attitude with the people who made them rich and famous. I don't mind them tightening the reins, but don't choke out the people who made you famous in the first place.

I'm glad Google made this change. I'm soooooo tired of finding crappy ezine articles when I'm looking for information.

With no-follow, there is no value to a marketer who use creating articles to improve their ranking on their personal site. The only value that EzineArticles will provide to a marketer is lead generation. Given that they already shun personal "advertorials" or links directly to their site, this also reduces the value of lead generation.

You could essentially create 100 unique quality articles and be lucky enough to generate traffic. That's all you will get.

When I started ghostwriting last year I went through the backlinks of many PR5-8 authority websites across many different competitive niches. Specifically sites that rank in the top 3 in Google's SERPs.

Ezinearticles isn't even a blip on the backlink screen for many of these sites. Article directories in general don't play a huge role in the success of many of the really competitive sites I've researched. (I use Majestic SEO for backlink research. It's pricey, but comprehensive.)

This isn't a blanket statement. It's only a heads up.

Google seems to like backlinks from other content sites besides article directories. That's why professional link builders like Eric Ward get paid a premium for their services. They get rank and traffic for their clients, and they don't depend on article directories.

Excellent. Love the NoFollow, even love the exclusive content possibility. Get rid of the backlinkers, the brute-force outsourcers, etc.

Time to write long, well-thought out articles that actually help people instead of the drivel that gets barfed up each day on that site.

Thumbs up, I hope Chris has the strength to withstand all the crying from IMers about it.

Based on the many, many articles I've read from that site, quite frankly, I'm not surprised. More than half of the articles on that website is blatant marketing attempt with no real value content on the article itself. Any real expert from the field of whatever niche the writer is writing about can instantly pick apart genuine articles from bland crap that's clearly just on ezine for the backlinking boost.

Sorry if that sounded harsh, but I write this from the customer's point of view. I've done my fair share of research as a customer and half the time, I end up going WTF at the articles I read on there.

I don't think they should get rid of the do follow links. If someone writes a good article and submits it to their directory then they deserve some link love.

What they should do is just have their article reviewers do their jobs and reject the low quality junk and spam, not punish those who built their business.

I am relatively new to Ezinearticles.com. What is changing exactly that would affect me moving forward?

Thanks!

I don't know about InfoBarrel either. According to Alexa, their traffic was down 27% yesterday:

Infobarrel.com Site Info

I have posted over 300 articles on ezinearticles and had almost 400,000 views. The trouble is these articles do not clickthrough to my own content very well and the only reason that I write for ezinearticles is for the linkback.

Once ezinearticles implements the nofollow it becomes worthless to me. I don't care if their quality is better or if they start banning spun content, until Google makes it clear that they will give credit to nofollow links I see no reason to submit any more articles there.

As it is if I post the content to my own blogs I get the articles for affiliate or adsense, I get control over keyword density, my article gets published immediately. The only trouble is getting the traffic. I think just writing for Stumbleupon or Digg or Reddit would be good enough to get organic links that would work better for cash in my pocket anyway.

I'm personally happy with the changes EZA is making. Big G is cracking down on content spam, and that forces EZA to acknowledge the problems it's facing on its home front. Eventually, they'll have to implement tougher controls, and that will inevitably weed out the low quality articles. That leaves us quality writers at the top where our content can be found by those searching for it.

It will also weed out the pretenders and make IM more challanging which is a good thing.

It's a pretty big, big hit on ezinearticles, though, whatever the case.

Can anyone honestly say they've been happy when searching for something online and coming upon an ezinearticles article? Satisfied and found what you were looking for online? For me, I would say no, very seldom if in personal searching I came upon ezinearticles I ended up with a good resource or the information I really needed.

I'm really surprised by the nofollow author resource box and traffic going way down... Will EZA survive the change?

Thanks for the great information here. I believe EZ was primarily being used for the follow link it provided earlier. Whenever I was looking for a information, EZ was anyway not the source I ever trusted. However, with this, what is the next option after EZ no longer offers the value ?

New to IM and "ranking"; is this why my article went from #3 on page 1 to being on page 5? Just noticed a couple days ago. The article is on articlesbase.

This is good to know. I was actually planning on starting an article site sometime in the future. Now, not so much.

Google is just as much a pain in SEO as it is in Adwords.

I don't call many things "Dead", but I will say that I think Article Marketing is one of those areas that just got delivered a well deserved death blow. And if you rely on article marketing to a great extent, then things might be rough for you.

I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune today about this issue. They talked about a guy that researched a medical problem and got served a bunch of articles from content farms. Now the same search will give you more credible medical resources.

From google's standpoint, they probably know that 99% of the articles in EZA are crap. And even though they throw away the 1% of the articles that might be moderately useful, they probably also realize that nobody will miss them.

If you write really good articles, then I'm sorry. But honestly most people don't write good articles, even when they say they do.

On a certain level you need to admit this is true - BUT, its also wrong that Google applies a global penalty to each single piece of content "just because it's on ezine articles". Something is not right here. I just commented this over at the ezine blog, i said applying a global penalty to all articles is at least as dumb as ranking any random "**** berry" or whatever article exceptionally well "simply because it is on ezine".

Is there no golden compromise in between?

Just been reading a lot on another forum. It's a pretty big algo change for a lot of sites, not just ezinearticles.

And I don't see, again, how this is a death blow to article marketing. It just might be a death blow of sorts to article marketing on ezinearticles. But there are going to be other kinds of 3rd party sites that still have their rankings intact that you could use for similar strategies. You just have to be creative and go with what's working at the time.

Nofollow attribute being added, I think EZA will integrate a premium feature allowing paid users to include a non nofollow link. They will be fine, a 50 percent cut on traffic would be what, 25-30 million visitors a month still? They'll be just fine.

Glad I never fell for Ole' EZA type article sites.

You guys that promote other sites with your articles will learn sooner or later, you should build your own niche network rather than support a site milking your articles for every penny they can get!

Lets see here, rank my own site or some other guys site?

Good luck with that!

Regarding the raising word count minimum, it's not really a big deal.

As the for exclusive content, EA is just one place I distribute content and if they required it be exclusive to them, I would check them off my list. I submit for exposure and backlinks (ooh . . . so evil I know.)

My focus is building MY sites. The best and exclusive content goes there. I'm not going to spend my time creating unique content to help build up EA for flipping bragging rights and a mug every once in awhile.

So they give you "expert author" status. They are an article directory, not the NYT. I hate to break it to you, but I don't care how many articles you have published there . . . outside of IM, it's really not something to put on your writer's resume.

Their business has been primarily built on providing a platform for internet marketers to promote their own sites and has been a mutually symbiotic relationship. They need to recognize that and keep that in mind when they are making reactionary changes.

Wow. EzineArticles is going to make all resource box links no-follow now?

That'll be interesting to see whether the rankings for my sites drop or not.
We'll find out whether no-follow links are really all that hype or not.

Almost 80% of my backlinks are from EZA.

Will report back to you guys in a week or 2.

EZA is taking a knee-jerk reaction to this change.

Let's consider NoFollow links for example. ArticlesBase has had NoFollow links for years, and they were hit as hard as EZA was hit.

The reaction they are making to this in my mind shows that Chris is a little out-of-touch with his own marketplace.

The problem is not Follow Links or original content or any of the other solutions he is offering. The problem is quality content.

When consumers go to Google, they want to find solutions to their problems, NOT a badly spun article that strikes all of the target keywords. They want and need solutions for their problems.

Let's look at EZA. With more than 5 million articles submitted to their system, I am willing to be better than 60% of their content is junk -- plain and simple.

Consumers do not want Google showing them junk content in response to their questions.

The only way EZA is going to survive this is to spend the money now to clean the garbage out of their system, pure and simple.

And of course, that will piss off a lot of the people, who as another poster said "made them famous".

If they want to do a more thorough job of bringing up the quality of their content, they must invest NOW in bringing up the quality of content. They should give their users the ability to VOTE OUT junk, keeping in mind that competitors will vote against their competition.

So instead of letting a single Down Vote kill an article, those down votes will require an editor to review the article for quality. If the article looks good, then the editor over-rides voters. Anything manually approved by the editorial team to stay in cannot be voted out and the vote button will disappear from that article.

But if a quality control editor agrees that the article is junk, then the editor has full nuking capabilities for that article.

That is the answer to EZA woes. The question is, will they spend the resources to save their ass, by cleaning out the junk and improving the quality of content inside their directory?

Given the knee-jerk reaction today, I am afraid that they do not know why they got crushed, and therefore, they are unable to see a valid solution to their problem.

Many of the changes proposed today amount to nothing more than stabs in the dark, which tells me that Chris isn't thinking this through.

I guess you need to be publicly listed like Demand Media to run a content farm or maybe AOL can buy you like HuffPo and then Google will leave you alone.

I never liked ezine or any other article directories nor did I ever see much of a bump from any article directory. I have seen some get a temporary boost, but didn't last long. Hope it works out for you all that do use it though yet.

I think no move on the nofollow link. They wont do that at the moment

And this is just one of the many reasons why I NEVER built backlinks to an article at a place like EZA. All of those people who were slamming backlinks to articles have to be kicking themselves now.

I use EZA primarily for traffic and lead generation and nothing more. The backlinks I never cared much for, just because their link weight isn't very "powerful" so to speak. Nonetheless, it's still a backlink, but getting a targeted visitor to me through my site is more important.

i use Ezine for traffic and backlinks, not really sure if this is going to effect me but i will be dissapointed if i lose my place in the serps because of this. seems like Ezine has turned their backs on the writers who have made their site as big as it is today. all of my content i have wrote for them has been unique but now that the links pointing to my site are no follow it seams like a waste of my time.

they have profited off my articles and now their saying thanks but we are going to make your links useless.

For those that were concerned EZA will not be making the links in the author's resource box "NoFollow" links. Chris has decided to keep the links in the author's resource box "DoFollow".

That was announced on their blog this morning in the comments section to his post yesterday.

Respectfully,
Tim

My author's bio is still do-follow at this moment.

But my blog has taken a huge hit. I noticed that message forums have taken a rise since this update.

I think the best solution for EZA is to up their quality control. Tighter quality control = better content published.

Seems like this could be a renaissance for the article syndication marketing model.

Bag of popcorn - check!

You see the hypocrisy?

Google themselves are the BIGGEST content scrapers and farmers..making zillions of dollars by using their OWN search engine as an advertising platform.

However *other* sites (like the "bad" ezine) should please refrain from using ads and affiliate links?

In other words: Dont try to make money on the net..only Google is allowed to do this! <-- lol

Well, if EZA stops accepting duplicate content (like the duplicate content I have been syndicating with them since the beginning) and they insist on originality, then between my blog/article directory and EZA, guess who gets the content...not EZA, that's for &^$% sure.

wow - this change worked wonders for me. Most of my "competitors" with whom I shared spots in the top 100 are gone. Just checked my articles in Market Sam for my keywrds across hubpages, ezine etc. and not only are mine still there with some pertubations in rank# but practically all the other guys are gone. Out of 30 results in the top 100 24 are mine. Gotta love it.

It pays to have quality articles written. Period.

Next!

Honnestly speaking, EzineArticles had the most strict rules I had even seen, too much requirment before admit your articles. Time consumptive thing! And none of my rubbish articles approved by them.